Christian Research Institute

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The Christian Research Institute (also popularly known as CRI) is one of the largest Evangelical Christian apologetics ministries of the world. It was established in October 1960 in the state of New Jersey by Walter Martin (1928-1989). In 1974 Martin relocated the ministry to San Juan Capistrano, California. After Martin's death in 1989, Hank Hanegraaff succeeded Martin as the ministry's president. The ministry's office was relocated in the 1990s near Rancho Santa Margarita, but in April 2005 it was announced that the ministry would be transferring to Charlotte, North Carolina.

Contents

[edit] Background

The establishment of CRI in 1960 is closely linked to the biography of Walter Martin. It represents one of the pioneering organisations in what is called the Christian countercult movement, but also relates to the wider history of Evangelical Christian apologetics in the mid-Twentieth century.

Martin is distinguished as one of the first full-time career apologists to have a ministry that specialised in countercult apologetics. In 1949 Martin began his forays into the theological analysis of various groups that Evangelicals have traditionally regarded as cults, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, and Spiritualism. Much of this early work coincided with his tertiary studies at Shelton College and New York University during the 1950s.

In 1953 Martin became acquainted with the Presbyterian radio evangelist Donald Grey Barnhouse. Barnhouse was the founding editor (1950) of the monthly periodical Eternity magazine. Stephen Board, in his study of the history of evangelical periodicals, has observed that during its first decade of publishing Eternity was built around Barnhouse's personality and his own particular causes.

In 1954 Barnhouse invited Martin to be a columnist in Eternity magazine, and then between 1955-1960 Martin served as a regular contributing editor. Martin wrote a number articles about cults, which formed the embryonic texts for various books he wrote. However, Martin also wrote book reviews, examined general apologetics and doctrinal issues, and also considered social questions such alcoholism.

The early 1950s witnessed the publication of several books that Martin wrote, or co-wrote with Norman Klann, such as Jehovah of the Watchtower (1953), The Christian Science Myth (1954), The Rise of the Cults (1955) and The Christian and the Cults (1956). Barnhouse wrote the foreword to The Christian Science Myth, and his support for Martin's ministry was crucial in legitimating countercult apologetics to the wider church constituency. In 1960 Barnhouse died from a brain tumour only a few weeks before Martin formally established CRI. By that time Martin had become an emerging apologist whose ministry and reputation was gaining recognition in para-church organizations like the American Tract Society, Evangelical Theological Society, National Association of Evangelicals, and National Religious Broadcasters.

[edit] Early Ministry Development

The basic charter for CRI began with the aim of serving as a bureau of information on cults, other religions, and Christian apologetics. It was assisted by individual donors and by charitable grants from organisations like the Pew Foundation. CRI was administered by a Board of Directors that included Martin's brother-in-law Everett Jacobson.

In the early 1960s much of CRI's activities centred on Martin's itinerant preaching ministry in churches and with para-church organisations. Martin delivered seminars throughout North America on the problems churches and missionaries faced with cults. He utilised the emergence of audio-cassette tapes with several of his seminar presentations recorded and initially distributed by Bible Voice Inc in New Jersey and the Audio Bible Society in Pennsylvania (later through Vision House and finally by CRI itself).

Martin also developed a profile on radio initially as a co-host of Barnhouse's Bible Study Hour, then as a regular panel guest on the Long John Nebel show in the 1960s. Martin then became the host of his own show The Bible Answer Man and Dateline Eternity. The show became nationally syndicated over time, but accelerated in popularity following the relocation of the ministry to California.

Martin sought to develop a library of resources on cults and apologetics, including books, audio files, and periodicals. He encouraged the development of a bureau of speakers associated with CRI, which in the 1960s included figures such as Walter Bjorck, Floyd Hamilton, James Bjornstad and Shildes Johnson. Other prominent theologians who were affiliated with CRI included Harold O. J. Brown and John Warwick Montgomery. The intention was to maintain a network of scholars involved in apologetics.

CRI produced various tracts about the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, distributed tapes, books and booklets by Martin, and initially ran a periodical in 1961-62 known as Religious Research Digest. In 1968 the ministry published a 26 page booklet UFO: Friend Foe or Fantasy.

In 1963 Martin conceived of the idea of creating a computer data bank of apologetics information. The concept was subsequently framed under the acronym SENT/EAST (Electronic Answering Search Technology). In 1968 a symposium of scholars was convened in Austria where the plans for CRI's computerised apologetics data bank were presented in lectures by Martin and John Warwick Montgomery. Much of these details were reported in Christianity Today and then in Montgomery's book Computers, Cultural Change and the Christ. Martin's vision was eventually realised with the development of broad public access to the Internet in the 1990s.

[edit] Transfer to California

In 1974 Martin left New Jersey and relocated to California, and this also entailed the transfer of CRI. In the early stages Martin was assisted by Bob and Gretchen Passantino as staff members in CRI. Martin also became part of the teaching faculty of the newly formed Melodyland School of Theology in Anaheim, where countercult apologetics was integrated into the curriculum and the 13,000 volumes of CRI's library was housed there. Later the ministry opened an office in El Toro, and then shifted to larger premises in Irvine.

The upsurge of interest in Martin's work and CRI coincided with the Jesus People revolution, the counterculture, and the social conflicts over new cults in the 1970s. During the 1970s and 1980s a number of younger apologists were mentored by Martin through CRI and included John Weldon, Paul Carden, Rich Poll, Robert Bowman, and Elliot Miller. The profile of CRI increased with the widespread sales of Martin's book The Kingdom of the Cults (now in the vicinity of some 750,000 copies sold), his audio-tape albums, his radio ministry, and his appearances on national television.

Martin was also involved in the establishment of the MA program in apologetics at the Simon Greenleaf School of Law in 1980. Martin taught there on cults and the occult throughout the 1980s, and was assisted from time to time by Bob and Gretchen Passantino.

In 1977 CRI launched a new quarterly periodical called the Christian Research Institute Newsletter, which in 1978 was retitled Forward. Through this periodical analyses were published about Hare Krishna, Jonestown, Rajneesh, the New Age and Satanism.

In 1987 Forward was revamped as Christian Research Journal, which was initially devised as a tri-yearly publication. In 1990 the journal was enlarged in size and became a quarterly publication, and has since become a monthly periodical.Christian Research Journal [1] has won several awards of excellence from the Evangelical Press Association. The journal now covers a wider range of issues in addition to cults, such as general apologetics, ethical apologetics, world religions, and theological controversies. It also includes contributed essays by authors who are not staff members with CRI.

In the 1980s CRI operated a branch office for the ministry in Brazil. Today there is a branch of CRI situated in Calgary, Canada with Stefan Butikofer as its Executive Director. Many smaller Christian countercult ministries have been modelled on the work of CRI.

After Martin's death Hanegraaff became President of CRI (see also below Controversies). Under his administration CRI has continued to sponsor seminars about cults and apologetics issues. However, Hanegraaff's own books and audio-tapes are now distributed by CRI, rather than Martin's tapes. Hanegraaff was involved in discussions with leaders of the Worldwide Church of God such as its Pastor General, Joseph Tkach Jr., and Greg Albrecht (then editor of the Plain Truth magazine). Those discussions formed part of a theological review of doctrine that leaders in the Worldwide Church of God began to undertake after the death of the church's founder Herbert W. Armstrong.

CRI operates equip.org website with apologetic resources and continues to broadcast the Bible Answer Man radio program.

[edit] Controversies

Due to the controversial nature of countercult apologetics generally, both Martin and CRI have been involved in various theological and social conflicts. During Martin's lifetime a variety of conflicts erupted between himself and various leaders of religious groups, but especially with Mormons. These clashes sometimes led to public debates and even a law suit for alleged defamation.

For a short time in the late 1970s CRI and Martin were involved in a controversy over claims that apologists had located part of the manuscript of the Book of Mormon, which it was alleged had been plagiarized from a novel by Solomon Spaulding. The case was argued in a book Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? by Wayne Cowdrey, Howard Davis and Donald Scales. However the case was seriously questioned by the Christian apologists Jerald and Sandra Tanner in Did Spaulding Write the Book of Mormon? It was also rebutted by the Mormon apologists Robert and Rosemary Brown in volume 2 of their series of books They Lie In Wait To Deceive. Edward Plowman reported on the CRI claims in Christianity Today magazine in July 1977, and then in October 1977 updated his report with evidence that pointed to the collapse in credibility of the claims (see the bibliography).

In a new and compelling 560 page book on the same subject, entitled, "Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? - The Spalding Enigma" (Concordia Publishing House, July 2005), much in the way of new and previously unpublished information breathes new life into, and strengthens the case for Spalding authorship for the Book of Mormon. Co-authors Cowdrey, Davis, and Vanick have shown for the first time that Sidney Rigdon did in fact visit Pittsburgh, the last residence of Spalding, before 1820, and actually early enough to have known Spalding and to have known about Spalding's manuscript. This puts to the lie a 175 year-old claim by the LDS that Rigdon was never there until several years after Spalding's death, which according to the Mormons, made it impossible for Rigdon to have ever known about Spalding or his unpublished manuscript, which Cowdrey, Davis, and Vanick claim formed the basis for what is now known as the Book of Mormon. (See bibliography.)

The Spalding authorship claims, proclaimed "dead" or "baseless" by Mormon apologists, have been considered serious enough, that FARMS, the apologetic arm of the Mormons, devoted nearly 130 pages to review the 2005 book.

In the last decade of Martin's life he became embroiled in controversies over the theology of the Word Faith or positive confession preachers, such as Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland. Those controversies have continued since Martin's death as Hank Hanegraaff has persisted with criticisms of this theology in books like Christianity in Crisis and Counterfeit Revival.

Since Martin's death in 1989, a different controversy has erupted from inside the Christian countercult movement over the leadership of CRI. A number of staff members who worked under Martin have quit working for CRI for a range of reasons. In 1994 about thirty former employees formed a lobbying-support group called Group for CRI Accountability. The former employees were concerned about a number of issues related to Hank Hanegraaff's administration, including allegations of wrongful dismissals of staff, plagiarism in Hanegraaff's writings, improper use of ministry resources and finances.

In April 2000 Walter Martin's widow and his eldest daughter Jill Martin-Rische have called for the removal of Hanegraaff as CRI president, which was the subject of an article in the Los Angeles Times (see bibliography below). Martin's son-in-law and daughter administer a ministry dedicated to perpetuating Walter Martin's writings and audio-lectures which is known as Walter Martin's Religious Information network.

CRI continues to remain in the Christian news spotlight in the twenty-first century concerning Hanegraaff's administration, and over litigation against a vocal critic of the ministry (see links section with articles from Christianity Today magazine). Hanegraaff has also been accused of drawing too much compensation from CRI for both him and his wife. [2]

[edit] Bibliography

  • "Christian Research Institute" in Peter D. Dresser (ed.) Research Centers Directory, 12th ed, Vol. 2 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1988), p. 1193.
  • "Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? - The Spalding Enigma", July 2005, Concordia Publishing House.
  • "Apologetics Ministry Resolves Wrongful Termination Suit," Christianity Today, September 11,1995, p. 88.
  • "Casting Stones: Questions About Radio's 'Bible Answer Man' Are Coming From Within," Los Angeles Times, April 15, 2000.
  • Letter to Editor by Darlene Nesland Martin, "Hanegraaff Wasn't Handpicked," Los Angeles Times, (Orange County Edition), April 30, 2000.
  • Margaret Barnhouse, That Man Barnhouse (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1983).
  • Stephen Board, "Moving the World With Magazines: A Survey of Evangelical Periodicals," in American Evangelicals and the Mass Media, Quentin J. Schultze, ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), pp. 119-142.
  • Walter Martin, "Christian Research Institute," The Christian Librarian, 14/1 (October 1970), pp. 15-18.
  • Walter Martin, "SENT/EAST: Electronic Answering Search Technology," The Christian Librarian, 14/1 (October 1970), pp. 3-6.
  • Walter Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1965; revised in several editions published by Bethany House in 1967, 1977, 1985, 1997 and 2003).
  • J. Gordon Melton, "The counter-cult monitoring movement in historical perspective," in Challenging Religion: Essays in Honour of Eileen Barker, edited by James A. Beckford & James T. Richardson, (Routledge, London, 2003), pp. 102-113.
  • John Warwick Montgomery, Computers, Cultural Change and the Christ (Wayne, New Jersey: Christian Research Institute, 1969).
  • John Warwick Montgomery, "Automating Apologetics in Austria," Christianity Today, November 8, 1968, pp. 57-58.
  • Edward E. Plowman, "Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?" Christianity Today (July 8, 1977), pp. 32-34.
  • Edward E. Plowman, "Mormon Manuscript Claims: Another Look," Christianity Today (October 21, 1977), pp. 38-39.
  • C. Allyn Russell, "Donald Grey Barnhouse: Fundamentalist Who Changed," Journal of Presbyterian History, 59/1 (Spring 1981), pp. 33-57.
  • Donald Tinder, "Evangelical Initiative: Fingertip Facts," Christianity Today, March 13, 1970, p. 53.
  • Joseph Tkach, Transformed By Truth (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah, 1997).

[edit] External links

[edit] Official

[edit] Criticism

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